To Win the Lady

by Mary Nichols

  TO WIN THE LADY

  by

  MARY NICHOLS

  Originally published in 1995 by Mills & Boon.

  Copyright 1995 and 2013 by Mary Nichols

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which is it published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Mary Nichols 2013

  Cover design: Elaine Nichols.

  The cover image is reproduced by permission of Anacronicos Recreacion Historica

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Lacking a son and heir, Mr Henry Paget bequeaths his elder daughter, Georgina, his horse-breeding stables with instructions to take care of her young sister, Felicity, and make sure she makes a good marriage. The stables are some of the best in the country; Henry Paget was renowned for his knowledge of horses, a knowledge he passed on to his daughter. The problem Georgie soon encounters is that men are reluctant to do business with a woman and she is finding it difficult to make the business pay, let alone have time and money to give her sister the come-out she deserves. The arrival of her aunt back from abroad takes the problem of the come-out out of her hands but Georgie is still left trying to convince the equestrian world that she knows what she is doing. When Major Richard Baverstock returns from Waterloo seeking a horse, her life becomes even more complicated. Her aunt is determined to marry Felicity off to Richard and, as her sister’s happiness is more important than her own, Georgie is prepared to promote the match, even when she realises she loves Richard herself. Her life becomes even more complicated when the odious Lord Barbour sets his cap at her, wanting to combine his failing stables with hers and is prepared to employ any means, however dastardly, to have his way. There seems no way out of her dilemma...

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In 1831 Squire George Osbaldestone, reputedly the finest athlete in the early part of the nineteenth century, completed a historic two-hundred mile ride round the four-mile long Newmarket Round Course in 8 hours 42 minutes 40 seconds, using twenty-eight horses. I assume this ride was inspired by Dick Turpin’s legendary ride from London to York a century before, which is also two hundred miles.

  In 1993, the jockey Peter Scudamore attempted to beat that long-standing record on the same course, using fifty horses. He succeeded by a mere 4 minutes 49 seconds.

  My story, set in 1815, a few years earlier than Osbaldestone’s ride, has been inspired by these rides, although I have made it more difficult for my hero by having the ride take place on the road, which is how Dick Turpin would have done it.

  Chapter One

  Mrs Bertram was decidedly miffed. It was not so much that there had been no one to greet her, for she was not expected and it was late in the afternoon, but to be told by a servant that she would like as not find Miss Paget in the stable was the outside of enough! What was the world coming to when a visitor was expected to go in search of her hostess?

  ‘Can she not be fetched?’

  ‘There’s no one to fetch her,’ the housekeeper said. ‘If you don’t care to go to the stables, ma’am, you could wait for Miss Felicity in the drawing-room.’

  ‘And, pray, where is she?’

  ‘I believe she walked to the village.’

  ‘And how long is she likely to be?’

  ‘I am afraid I can’t say, ma’am. She’s visiting Mrs Wardle.’

  Mrs Bertram decided she would have something to say about the rag-mannered way she had been received when she came face to face with her nieces, but for now there was nothing to do but wait until one or other of them put in an appearance. Drawing herself up to her full height, which was nothing to speak of, for she was as round as she was tall, she allowed herself to be conducted to the drawing-room.

  It was a large rambling house, full of solid furniture that had been there a half a century or more, and though that in itself did not signify she was appalled by the general air of neglect. Although the carpets could not be said to be threadbare, they had certainly lost their colour and the paint on the doors was beginning to peel. It smacked of genteel decay. Added to that, the drawing-room into which she was conducted was cluttered to say the least and there was a film of dust on the polished surfaces. A fringed silk shawl had been flung carelessly across a sofa; there was an open book on a low table and a couple of wolfhounds were sprawled across the hearth. A cat rose from a chair and stretched itself lazily before jumping down and padding out of the room.

  Bidding her to be seated, the housekeeper excused herself on the grounds that she had a bran-mash on the boil and must attend to it. Bran-mash! In the kitchen! Had they run mad?

  Mrs Bertram looked about her for somewhere to sit and, deciding not to risk getting her plum-coloured silk covered in animal hairs, turned about and left the house to go in search of her niece. She walked round the side of the house and, holding her skirts clear of the cobbles, crossed the yard to the stable block. In contrast to the house, the stables exhibited every sign of being well-maintained. The paintwork was good, the ground swept clean and the horses, looking out of their loose boxes, were well-groomed and alert. There were grooms and stable-boys busy about the yard and she asked one, who was raking straw out of one of the stables, for the whereabouts of Miss Paget.

  ‘In the foaling box, ma’am,’ he said, nodding towards the end of the row of boxes. ‘Though I shouldn’t...’ But the lady had gone, striding off towards the box he had indicated, and he shrugged and went on with his task.

  ‘Georgiana?’ Mrs Bertram peered short-sightedly into the gloom of the box. ‘Georgiana, is that you?’

  At the sound of her name, the young woman kneeling in the straw beside the mare looked up with a slightly puzzled expression. She had been so engrossed in the task of wiping the mucous from the damp coat of the new-born filly, she had paid scant attention to the sound of a carriage drawing up, knowing her sister would deal with any callers. But her visitor had obviously eluded Felicity. Georgie did not immediately recognise her, but there was something familiar about the plump figure who stood on the threshold, silhouetted against the light. She had a round pink face and corkscrew grey locks which were half concealed by a huge mauve bonnet sporting a sweeping green feather.

  ‘You will forgive me for not rising, I know,’ Georgie said. ‘This little one needs all my attention at the moment.’ And with that she turned to concentrate on the important task of looking after the filly, which was trying to get to its feet, all spindly legs on a body seemingly too big for it. It had a good head, though, an Arabian head with wide nostrils and brown eyes which hinted at the intelligence she hoped it had inherited from its sire, Grecian Warrior, son of Bucephalus, the stallion her father had bred for the Prince of Wales before he had become the Prince Regent. Bucephalus had been a prince among stallions and Warrior was almost as good. Georgie had high hopes for all Warrior’s progeny and this one looked most promising. It had a dark chestnut coat, a white flash on its nose and white socks. Georgie smiled as it tottered towards its mot
her, already on her feet and whinnying to it. ‘Warrior Princess,’ she said aloud.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The figure in the door moved slightly, allowing the sunlight which flooded the yard to penetrate the dimness of the stable.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ Georgie scrambled to her feet, revealing herself to be clad in a man’s breeches and shirt. ‘It’s the filly’s name. Warrior Princess, sired by Grecian Warrior. That,’ she added, pointing to the mare, ‘is Royal Lady. Foals are nearly all born during the night, did you know that? The Arabs considered it unlucky for one to be born in the daytime and would often destroy it. Thank goodness we are not so barbaric, for this one is a little beauty.’ She laid a hand gently on Royal Lady’s nose. ‘You let me have my sleep, didn’t you, Lady?’

  ‘It is Georgiana, isn’t it?’ Mrs Bertram enquired again, as if she could hardly believe the dreadful apparition which confronted her.

  ‘Yes, I am Georgiana Paget.’ No one had called her Georgiana since her father died six months before and he had only used her full name to express his displeasure at something she had done or left undone and that in itself had been rare. To her sister, Felicity, and close friends she was Georgie and to the servants Miss Paget. ‘But I’m afraid...’

  ‘Don’t you know me? I am your aunt Harriet. Your housekeeper said I might find you here, and that was bad enough in all conscience, but I hardly expected...’

  Georgie stroked a lock of hair from her face and managed to daub her cheeks with dirt. ‘Aunt Harriet! I am so sorry, I did not know you. It’s been years...’

  ‘Indeed it has - eight at least. I should have come sooner...’ She stopped to survey her sister’s elder daughter from her brown riding boots, up over the breeches stuck here and there with straw, and the voluminous shirt with the sleeves rolled up, to her smudged face and crop of auburn curls. They were cut in what, had she been a man, might have been called the wind-swept style but which was really the result of Georgie having taken the scissors to them herself to keep her hair out of her eyes when she was working with the horses. It was convenience, not fashion which dictated her looks and that much was painfully obvious to her aunt. ‘I knew Henry had some very strange ideas about raising children, but I never thought to see the day when his daughter took to being a stable-lad.’

  Georgie looked down and tried unsuccessfully to brush the straw from her breeches. ‘Petticoats are hardly practical for acting midwife to a horse,’ she said, giving her aunt a rueful smile. ‘Let us go back indoors and I will bath and change.’

  ‘Let us do that,’ Harriet said crisply. ‘And when you are fit to be seen we will talk.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt, of course.’ She turned to the stable-master who had been hovering in the shadows. ‘Look after them, Dawson,’ she said, indicating the mare and her foal. ‘And get someone to see to Mrs Bertram’s carriage and horses.’ With a last wistful look at the filly, now sucking strongly at one of the mare’s teats, she led the way across the cobbles of the stableyard and into the house by a side-door.

  ‘Do sit down, Aunt,’ Georgie said when they reached the drawing-room. ‘If only you had sent word, we would have been in a better state to greet you.’

  In spite of the gravity of the situation, Harriet Bertram smiled; it would, in her opinion, have taken an army of servants working a month to have made the place ready to receive visitors. ‘Would the mare have postponed her lying-in for me?’

  Georgie laughed. ‘No, but Felicity would most assuredly have been here to welcome you. I can’t think where she is.’

  At that moment Felicity herself appeared. At eighteen she was eight years younger than her sister and tiny by comparison, and, though there was a family likeness if one looked closely for it, it was masked by the elder girl’s masculine attire and the younger’s pale frailty. Mrs Bertram looked from one to the other as Felicity, in grey jaconet half-mourning, came forward and dropped a curtsy. ‘I am sorry I was not here when you arrived, ma’am,’ she said. ‘I was visiting Mrs Wardle; she is the gardener’s wife and helps in the house occasionally, but she was taken sick two days ago.’

  ‘And is that why this room is in such a parlous state?’ demanded Mrs Bertram, flicking a lace handkerchief ineffectually over a chair before sitting on it.

  Both girls looked round the room as if seeing it with a stranger’s eyes; it had what Georgie chose to call a lived-in look, but she could not deny it would have been better for the use of a broom and feather duster. Felicity glanced at Georgie with an eyebrow raised as if to ask who it was who had the temerity to criticise someone else’s home, even if the criticism was a little justified.

  ‘Felicity, this is our aunt Harriet,’ Georgie explained. ‘She has but lately arrived from Brussels.’

  ‘Brussels! Oh, were you there for the battle?’ The defects in the housekeeping were of less importance to Felicity than news of the outside world. She plumped herself down on a stool beside her aunt and leaned towards her. ‘How exciting that must have been. Did you see it?’

  ‘The battle was nine miles away at Waterloo,’ their aunt told them. ‘And that was certainly too close for comfort. We could hear the guns from the city walls. But I did not come to talk about war, though by the looks of this room there might have been one here. Is the gardener’s wife your only servant?’

  ‘After Papa died it seemed an extravagance to have a household of servants to look after just two of us,’ Georgie said. ‘But there is Fanny, who is really a maid of all work, bless her, and Mrs Thorogood, whom you met and who has been in the family for years and years, and Mrs Wardle. Most of the outside staff have been kept on because they are needed to run the farm and stud.’

  Mrs Bertram clucked her tongue and the plume on her hat nodded in unison as she commented dryly that it was obvious where Georgiana’s priorities lay, but she would say no more until her niece had washed and changed her clothes, for she did not think she could abide the smell a moment longer.

  ‘My husband has been a cavalry officer for the best part of twenty years and he would not dream of bringing the odour of the stables into the drawing-room,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘And as for those dogs, why are they allowed in the house?’

  ‘Papa was always used to let them in,’ Georgie said. ‘He said they were company for him and they have grown accustomed to the run of the place.’ She looked down at herself and then at the animals and conceded that her aunt had a point. She called to the hounds and, when they went obediently to her side, gently put them out of the low casement window, not withstanding the fact that they stood outside on the terrace looking aggrieved. ‘I shall be back directly,’ she said, making for her bedroom and the hot water Fanny had put out for her.

  Half an hour later she returned to the room in a simple grey sarcenet gown, and though the colour did nothing for her, Harriet was forced to admit that her niece was as comely as any young woman could be who spent half her life out of doors and was prey to the elements.

  ‘Now,’ she said, when all three were seated once more and Georgie was dispensing the tea. ‘It seems I have not arrived a moment too soon.’

  The girls looked at one another and then back at their aunt. Georgie’s spirits sank. She knew she was in for a scolding and though she did not know what she could have done differently she felt guilty and ill at ease.

  ‘What do you mean, Aunt?’ Felicity asked innocently. ‘We know you could not have come any sooner, what with Uncle Edward being in the army and the war and you travelling with him and everything. How is Uncle Edward?’

  ‘He is well, came through without a scratch, thank the good Lord. I left him in Belgium, but now that pipsqueak Napoleon has finally been defeated he will be home in a matter of weeks. I came ahead to open up the house in Holles Street.’

  ‘Did you know that Papa...?’ Georgie gulped and made herself speak evenly. ‘Did you know Papa had died?’

  ‘I received your letter telling me of it, long after the funeral, of course, for it followed me all over the C
ontinent. I came as soon as I could to be with you. Now, tell me all about it.’

  ‘He died as he lived,’ Georgie said. ‘In the saddle.’

  ‘A fall?’

  ‘No, Warrior would not unseat him. He had a heart seizure and though Dr Penreddy came almost at once there was nothing he could do.’ She paused, remembering that dreadful day and her own despair when she’d realised that the one person she had loved and depended on above all others was no more and that she, being the elder, must stifle her own misery to comfort and care for her sister. ‘I think Papa would have approved of his end.’

  ‘What provision did he make for you girls? Where are you to live?’

  ‘Live?’ queried Georgiana. ‘Why, here, of course. It is our home.’

  ‘Alone? It is out of the question.’

  ‘We are not alone. We have servants. And it was Papa’s wish.’

  The reading of the will had taken only a few minutes and had shocked even Georgie, who was used to her father’s idiosyncrasies. All Sir Henry’s assets were tied up in the stud farm and he had left them solely to his elder daughter, just as if she had been a son, and adjured her to take care of her sister, who was left only a small annuity. Old Benson, who had been her father’s lawyer since time began, had been embarrassed and unhappy, but Georgie had cheerfully told him she would manage. And manage she had, but it was still a struggle. No one wanted to buy horses from a woman and by continuing to live alone the girls had put themselves beyond the pale as far as social visits were concerned.

  ‘He must have been queer in the attic,’ Mrs Bertram said crisply. ‘How can you expect to find husbands tucked away in the country with no one to bring you out?’

  ‘Aunt, I am six and twenty - well past the age when I need bringing out,’ Georgie said. ‘And as for Felicity, I shall bring her out myself, just as soon as I can come about.’